Skillet & Alter Bridge's Victorious Sky Tour Soars in Philly

Skillet and Alter Bridge brought their co-headlining Victorious Sky Tour to the Met in Philadelphia, PA on September 25, 2019. Dirty Honey opened the show.

Dirty Honey’s debut single, “When I’m Gone,” has just moved up from #3 to the #2 position at Rock Radio, and the band is the only new artist in 2019 to see its debut track get into Rock Radio’s Top 5. Dirty Honey has a fresh take on balls-out rock’n’roll, southern blues, and big choruses, and delivers dynamic live sets night after night.

The sound of Dirty Honey’s straight-up-no-apologies-no-explanations-needed music has been called “new-fashioned Rock ’n Roll.” As vocalist Marc LaBelle puts it, “We don’t want to bring anything back, we just want to make music that’s sexy and hard and rocking all at the same time.” The Los Angeles-based band – LaBelle, John Notto/guitar, Justin Smolian/bass, and Corey Coverstone/drums – has already won the praise of artists like The Who, Guns N’ Roses, and Slash, all of whom they’ve supported on tour.

And Dirty Honey is 2019’s first new band to have its debut single, “When I’m Gone,” the riffy, big beat track with an instantly catchy anthemic chorus, become a Top 10 hit at rock radio. In support of its self-titled, self-released debut EP, the group tours nearly non-stop, mining its reputation as a cranking live act, in clubs, theaters, arenas, and major outdoor festivals from Welcome to Rockville, Sonic Temple and Rocklahoma to Heavy Montreal, and Epicenter. So what makes this young, still unsigned band such a force? Meaty melodies, explosive dynamics, grooves as tight as a sealed envelope, vocals that bellow across the ice and snow of Valhalla, and guitar riffs that come at you like a heavyweight haymaker. LaBelle is convinced that millennials have been starved for truly great rock music for a long time. “At some point,” he explains, “EDM and hip-hop isn’t the new thing anymore and what’s fresh again now is rock.”

Skillet, the veteran Christian hard rock band from Tennessee, recently relesed their 10th album “Victorious” on August 2nd, 2019. The follow-up to the RIAA-gold-certified “Unleashed” (SKILLET‘s fourth consecutive album to receive either a gold, platinum, or double-platinum certification), the new project continues to propel the band’s position as one of the best-selling rock bands of the 21st century, racking up over one billion streams in 2018 alone.

Victorious has recurring themes of fighting through adversity and not giving up, which fits perfectly with Skillet‘s first graphic novel, Eden. In the graphic novel, which Cooper describes as The Hunger Games meets The Walking Dead mixed with classic sci-fi, the characters are faced with conflicts such as the cost of one life versus the greater good.

Alter Bridge based in Orlando, Florida, Alter Bridge formed out of the remnants of popular hard rock act Creed, offering a more melodic, metal sound than the post-grunge of their past act.

After Creed came to an end in 2004, members Mark Tremonti (lead guitar), Brian Marshall (bass) and Scott Phillips (drums) joined forces with ex-The Mayfield Four singer and guitarist, Myles Kennedy. Forming Alter Bridge, the band quickly got to work on their debut album, “One Day Remains,” which found great success, eventually being certified Gold. The virtuosic guitar talent of Tremonti and the powerful vocals of Kennedy helped the album stand apart from Creed’s discography.

After touring globally in support of the album, the band left their label, Wind Up, and moved to Universal imprint, Republic. Returning to the studio for their second effort, 2007’s “Blackbird,” Alter Bridge found success with the lead single, “Rise Today,” finding widespread positive critical acclaim, displaying a greater songwriting influence of Kennedy.

In 2009, Creed reformed and Alter Bridge was put on the back burner by the members, with Kennedy joining Slash’s touring band. Yet a year later, Alter Bridge was back in full force, returning with the album, “AB III.” A live album of their stadium-sized performance, “Live at Wembley: European Tour” soon followed, which displayed their anthemic abilities. Praise continued for Alter Bridge with their fourth record, “Fortress,” which was released to positive acclaim in 2013.